10 Movie Endings You Can No Longer See

Dr Strangelove has one of cinema’s most striking conclusions. Faced with the looming reality of worldwide nuclear war, eccentric scientist Dr Strangelove rises unexpectedly from his wheelchair with a plan to stop the destruction... and explosions suddenly go off around the world. Audiences were left with a sarcastic laugh of despair that no other film in its era could achieve.

It also has one of the industry’s most discussed alternative endings that is nearly too barmy to be believed. In the original script, the film continued with… a pie fight in the Pentagon's war room.

This 1960s classic originally closed by parodying the warfront with a battle of cream and pastry. So close was this to being the case that not only was it shot, it was also shown to test audiences that included critics.

Kubrick felt that the final scene became "too farcical" and, worse yet, his actors had lost focus in the fun of the pie throwing and had actually started laughing on camera. The final nail came when a preview of the film was due to land on the same day as the real life assassination of John F. Kennedy. The line in this scene that exclaimed “our gallant young president has been struck down in his prime” suddenly felt too close to the bone.

Thus, Kubrick found the right point to cut the final scenes off of Strangelove, and they haven’t ever been seen since.